GERMANTOWN HILLS — An effort by some residents to improve personal hygiene is causing a public mess in Germantown Hills.

Public Works Director Rich Brecklin said personal sanitary wipes being flushed down village commodes are clogging up pumps and often causing costly repairs.

While the effectiveness of toilet paper is debatable, the tissue does very well what it was designed to — break down in sewer systems. Its high-tech towelette counterpart, however, does not, and wipes woven from a different cloth are easy to identify.

"If you look at these disposable wipes — some say disposable, some say flushable — if you notice, they're thicker. They're woven tighter, and they're already wet and not falling apart," Brecklin said. "They don't go away. They may make it down to the sewer plant on a gravity system, and then you've got problems at the plant."

Brecklin said the village doesn't care how residents conduct their business but cares that those materials are disposed of properly. And consumers should pay heed to the notice on their utility bills warning against the wipes rather than trusting manufacturer labels.

"We don't tell people don't use them, but we just don't want them flushed down into our system," Brecklin said. "Some of them do say 'flushable' — they're not flushable. They're not flushable in a gravity system; they're not flushable in a septic system; and they are especially not flushable in ejection pumps or grinder pump systems."

The consequences are consuming and costly for public works crews, whether they are being called out in the middle of the night when an alarm sounds in someone's home when their grinder pump gets clogged or they have to contract services for maintenance on the larger lift pumps.

It could get messy, too.

"If these pumps fail and the people don't recognize that their alarm is going on in their house and they continue to use water, it can back up in their home," Brecklin said.

Todd Huson, an engineer with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in the Bureau of Water, said clogs caused by non-flushable wipes have plagued many sewer treatment plants in the 14 counties in central Illinois they oversee.

Most don't have the number of grinder and lift pumps used in Germantown Hills, where the village's topography merited a certain sewage system.

Huson said the wipe clogs are an issue that makes maintenance more difficult for the village but doesn't necessarily merit an environmental risk. The clogs mean more work for crews to prevent overflows and backups.

"I don't necessarily think it's a big problem, it's more of a maintenance issue with operating and maintaining the residential lift stations," Huson said. "They don't want these to fail."

Laura Nightengale can be reached at 686-3181 or lnightengale@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter @lauranight.